Provincial exam results?

Grade 10:English 10, Math 10, Science 10 (ALL ARE MANDATORY) ………..oddly enough, I was in a way EXCITED to do these exams back when I was in grade 10..and I actually did QUITE well on them! (English 10 was actually scaled though, DRAMATICALLY scaled, my mark went up about 10-11% ..some of the teachers in my school were provincial markers, so it was nice knowing before results came out what our ‘potential’ marks could be.)

Grade 11: Socials 11 (MANDATORY)….I honestly don’t know WHERE I would use the information I learned in Socials 11..)

Grade 12: English 12(MANDATORY..or Communications 12, depending on which one you’re taking) …The rest are optional..and I took Bio 12 and Math 12.

And ever since they made grade 12 provincials OPTIONAL..they started doing a scholarship for getting 3 A’s on your provincial exams…you would get $1000.

[UPDATE] : Based on some searches, some people had been searching HOW to check exam results: http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/exams/ ..and then go to ‘Get Exam Results’…and remember you need to enter your PEN(Personal Education Number) as well..so if you don’t know that..then you won’t be able to access your results. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. 🙂
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Weelll…results have been out as of Monday, July 24th..

And in case you’re wondering how I did? Not as well as I COULD have done (now doesn’t everyone say that? but I truly mean it). But I mean I did decently. But we just didn’t have enough time to properly study for exams..but I realized during exam prep how I SHOULD have studied…and that cramming doesn’t necessarily work unless you’re really super genius-ly smart(that’s cool too).

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MY ADVICE TO YOU: Don’t take provincials (other than Eng 12..obviously, ‘cuz you kinda HAVE to take it) …UNLESS you are absolutely sure that it will raise your mark and/or you are going for the scholarship. WHY? If you are a student going to a BC post-secondary institute, then it’s ‘okay’ if you manage to take the provincials and your mark drops..’cuz BC post-secondary schools don’t look at your provincial mark blended with your school final if it’s lower than your school final…AKA..they just look at the higher mark for admission purposes. BUT… pretty much every school outside of BC(all other Canadian provinces + international) looks at the provincial blended mark/provincial mark alone…so if your mark drops after taking the provincial..then you have the potential to be screwed over. So all in all..be VERY CAREFUL in making your decisions about which exams to take. 🙂

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And I will make a separate post some time before September..about study tips for final exams and such..and honestly, it’s best to start from the beginning of the year..but you will read that in my later post..so keep that in mind !

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3 thoughts on “Provincial exam results?”

I TOTALLY agree with both of you!!(as contradicting as that sounds) I actually DID take provincials to find out where I stand at a provincial level ‘cuz my school is considered as one of the ‘higher’ ranked schools in the province, and I know that people in my class that wrote the provincials as well, all dropped from their school averages(which is quite normal).
In a way I actually thought provincials should just go back to being mandatory(as carly said). It’s definitely a learning experience studying for provincials, which review the whole year’s worth of material. And it just so happened we didn’t even completely FINISH the year’s worth of material til about 3 days before the in school final exam week (which was a week before provincial exam week..with the exception of bio which was on the last week of june). We were extremely rushed through our material, resulting in almost a failing average in the last ‘test’ of the year for our science subjects. And in all honesty, it totally IS a prep/reality check for prospective university students. Once again as Carly said, it’s like a standardization test and shows at what level your understanding is of the subject matter based on a provincial level. And there are quite a few study habits that I would have changed if I had the chance..which I will mention in the separate post about study habits..but reviewing material(as often as you can…rather than keeping it all til the week before exams to review) is DEFINITELY going to help and get you out of trouble, and I for one know that I am really going to be working on reviewing course material daily!!

lol provincial exams being optional are a popular debate amongst students. Many argue that we should make provincials mandatory again, because it’s affecting the admission average of many schools like UBC, i.e. it’s why minimum admission averages for Science (and many other faculties) have been increased to 90%+… and there’s also the problem of some schools giving higher grades to students for work that may not be given so high at another school, yet UBC looks at those marks equally. Then you end up with students who are inadequately prepared to attend UBC, and experience heavy drops in grades from high school :[

So I don’t know if I’d want to risk omitting provincials to be able to get a high average to attend a school I might not be ready for, because there’s a chance I could fail out of it anyway… but who knows, maybe students change in university?!

I’d also do provincials regardless of whether my mark drops, because I like to know how I performed on a provincial-wide basis. And I did do all of them in fact. Some of the provincials even raised my mark… lol (a plus for me)

I agree with Carly. I found that preparing for provincial exams, especially the ones for science and english in grade 12 forced me to study the course from beginning to end, rather than memorizing review concepts at the last second (i.e. procrastinating). In fact, provincial exams, being worth 40% of your overall grade, is a very good taste of the grading scheme in university. For example, most of the first year science course marks will be heavily influenced by midterms and a final exam usually worth about 50% of the final mark. Learning how to study for multiple exams in a short time period (you usually get at least 1 or 2 days to prepare) is essential for many application dense courses you’ll encounter in first year.